By Mike Anton His masterpiece has been on display for decades in a
place no one wants to visit, admired by a rough crowd of critics who
study its beauty and nuance for years on end--or until the parole board lets them out.Alfredo Santos was a two-bit hood when he landed in
California's San Quentin State Prison in 1951 for selling heroin.
But he left his mark on the state's oldest prison by painting a
collection of nearly 100-foot-long murals in the inmate cafeteria, a
flowing picture book of California's history.These extraordinary
works have won praise from the few experts who have seen them, but for
years no one knew who the painter was. Santos, embarrassed by his time
in San Quentin, kept silent.He is 80 now, seeing his prolific and
unprofitable art career in the rearview mirror. He shuffles from one
shabby San Diego rental to another, scraping

by on $800 a month in Social Security. He can't afford art
supplies, so he draws graceful portraits on upside-down magazine ads as
he tries to figure out what to do next."I'm the worst
businessman in the world," Santos said. His white goatee is
carefully trimmed, his shirt pockmarked by unattended cigarettes.
"I gave a lot of my work away. Lost so many. Got ripped off.
That's what happens to artists. ... I always said I'm not
going to become famous until after I'm dead."That's what
some collectors who have been picking up his work for pocket change are
betting on.Santos was born in San Diego but spent much of his childhood
in nearby Tijuana, Mexico. He gravitated to art early. When Santos was
8, teachers were taking note of portraits he had drawn of classmates.
His father, a carpenter, taught him woodwork.Santos was also a
troublemaker. He got tossed out of high school for hitting a teacher. He
enrolled in a San Diego art school but also worked smuggling illegal
immigrants into the United States. He was arrested and spent 18 months
in federal prison."I was leading two lives," he said.When
Santos entered San Quentin on the heroin charge, he immediately caught a
break. A leg injury landed him in the prison infirmary, where a
sympathetic doctor took a liking to him. He advised Santos to keep a low
profile."He said, 'Kid, play it cool. Don't make any
noise'. So I didn't make any noise," Santos said.
"The first two years I was there, all I did was do art and read, do
art and read. I had two cells to myself--one for me, one for my
materials."Santos was assigned the job of filling the
cafeteria's blank walls in 1953 after winning a prison art
competition. He worked at night for more than two years, aided by two
inmate helpers who moved scaffolding, and overseen by a single
guard.Santos was paroled after serving four years and returned to
Southern California, where he found work knocking out caricatures of
tourists at Disneyland. Later, he opened a gallery in San Diego and
embarked on a career as a fine artist.And a fine artist, Santos figured,
shouldn't have a rap sheet.Today, a scrape with the law might give
an artist a boost, a dose of street cred that distinguishes him from the
dilettantes, an edgy story to tell over cocktails at a gallery
showing.Santos told no one."I was ashamed. It was something to keep
secret," he said. Who would rent him a studio if they knew about
his incarceration? "It would be bad for business."As the years
passed, the story behind the unsigned murals disappeared from San
Quentin's institutional memory."When they were done, it
wasn't seen as important to know who painted the murals," said
Lt. Sam Robinson, San Quentin's spokesman and a former death row
guard. "They were done as a prison work project just to dress up
the walls."In the mid-1990s, local historians digging into San
Quentin's rich past began asking: Who painted the murals? Santos
tried to answer that question a few years later when he called the
prison and asked if he could see his work once again.Vernell Crittendon,
San Quentin's spokesman at the time, hung up on him. "I
thought he was just a criminal," Crittendon said. "And
I'm not letting a criminal into the prison unless he has an
invitation from a judge."In 2003, Santos was finally identified as
the muralist, a story corroborated by retired guards who had served as
models for characters. Crittendon invited Santos to San Quentin, where
he was feted and given an honorary key to the joint. He provided prison
officials with another mystery by taking responsibility for only four of
the six murals. Who did the other, decidedly more crude paintings, is
unknown."It was nice," Santos said. "There was a big
buffet. I was a celebrity for one night."If a prison hosting an art
event seems odd, think again; San Quentin might be one of the
nation's most improbable art museums.Framed oil and watercolor
paintings line the walls of the administration building, and murals are
scattered throughout the ancient fortress. California highway scenes
from the 1940s adorn a stairway in the infirmary. When a holding tank
was recently remodeled, workers were shocked to discover a rendering of
Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel fresco underneath a false ceiling
that was probably done in the 1920s. A mural featuring aircraft and
ships is visible to a few on death row.But the Santos murals remain the
prison's piece de resistance.The dining hall is an unappetizing
mess of peeling paint, rusty girders, plastic furniture bolted to the
floor and windows that look as if they haven't been cleaned since
the 1930s when the place was built.Seeing the murals for the first time
is a startling and incongruous experience. Portions are marred by water
damage and flaking. Here and there a con seeking immortality has
scrawled his name. But given the environment, it's astonishing how
well-preserved they are.The murals are jammed with images depicting
California's transformation from wilderness to mid-20th century
industrial powerhouse. Indians and the Gold Rush flow into agriculture,
oil, Hollywood, aviation and freeways. A San Francisco streetcar and the
Golden Gate Bridge share space with the Hollywood Bowl and the Los
Angeles Coliseum. Ironworkers erecting cities rub shoulders with
Einstein and the atomic bomb.Tucked inside the murals are subversive
images that inmates enjoy pointing out, including a pickpocket and a
Peeping Tom."When I came out of San Quentin I was sure I could make
a living out of art," Santos said. "San Quentin is where I
graduated art school."His career took him from San Diego to Mexico,
where he found success in Guadalajara, Acapulco and Mexico City. He
worked feverishly, producing thousands of paintings and wood sculptures
in a variety of styles, using whatever materials were at hand--broken
glass, bits of plastic, swirling knots extracted from planks of
mahogany, tiny pieces of driftwood nailed together like a puzzle to
create a three-dimensional scene.His galleries were hipster hangouts
where the party never stopped. He made good money, he said, but spent it
fast.His goal was to move to Europe, but Santos was advised that he
first had to make it in New York. He consulted a fortuneteller in Mexico
City before going north."She told me if I went to New York, they
were going to rip me off and that I would end up in Baja someday broke
and poor," he said. "I never should have gone to New York. The
woman, she was right."Ross Altman was at his vacation place in the
Catskill Mountains of New York two years ago when he visited an auction
house. Amid the jumble of antiques and junk, the painting of a soulful
Christ-like figure playing a violin caught his eye. The canvas was
fashioned from planks of wood overlaid with newspapers. The paint turned
out to be black tar."It spoke to me. It evoked an emotion,"
said Altman, 62, a rare-gem dealer in Manhattan's jewelry district.
He doesn't recall what he paid for the piece but said it was less
than $100.The artist intrigued him, so he searched for Alfredo Santos on
the Internet. Up popped links to some San Francisco Bay area articles on
his stint in San Quentin."When I found out that he was known--had
done this San Quentin mural thing--my feeling was that any artist who is
known, an original work of his has to be worth more than $100,"
Altman said. Within a year, he had bought 18 more Santos pieces.Santos
had landed in the small Catskills town of Fleischmanns in the mid-1960s
after two disastrous years in New York during which a planned gallery
showing was canceled after dozens of his best works were lost en route
from Mexico.The Catskills are thought to be littered with paintings and
sculptures Santos produced over a decade of hard work -- and partying.
Until recently, his works would pop up regularly at estate auctions and
yard sales, where they could be snatched up for next to nothing.But
since Santos became known as the muralist of San Quentin, prices have
risen sharply and availability has withered.Santos believes he will end
up exactly where the fortune teller predicted he would--broke in
Mexico.In April, he was forced to move from a room in a shabby rental
home to a downtown San Diego flophouse. "It's too late for me
to make any money," Santos said. "But at least I'm
finally being recognized. It's proof that I existed." A*LATWP
News Service The artist who made San Quentin into a museum

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